We live in a divided world where some people buy digital and the vast majority still buy the real thing. Major publishers are seeing 24% of their global revenue stemming from eBooks and print still reigns supreme. The gap is quickly closing and many industry experts agree the total eBook market will account for $9.7 billion worldwide in 2016, more than three times the $3.2 billion in 2012. Bookstores have always played a pivotal role in book discovery and book culture in general. How will the bookstore change when digital becomes the preferred format?

The publishing industry has been buzzing lately about Amazon's latest announcement, Kindle MatchBook. MatchBook, which launches in October, offers consumers extremely low-priced ebook version of print books they've already bought (or will buy).My first reaction to the announcement was, "great for consumers, not so much for publishers and authors." MatchBook is consistent with Amazon's overarching goal of offering the world's lowest prices. So as a reader I'm thrilled about MatchBook, but I have to admit it's yet another reason why I'm kind of happy to no longer be in the book publishing business.

This smarthone caught everyone’s attention back in December because it has not one but 2 screens. On the back of the device is the usual LCD screen found on most smartphones, while on the front you will find an E-ink screen.The production model (not to be confused with the demo units shown off in videos) is going to run Android 4.3 on a dual-core 1.7GHz Snapdragon S4 Pro CPU. It will ship with 2GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, Wifi, BT, GPS, a 12MP camera, GLONASS, and LTE. The 4.3″ LCD screen will have a screen resolution of 1280 × 720, while the E-ink screen will also measure 4.3″ and sport a resolution of 640 × 360.

Sony will be officially releasing their new 3rd generation T3 e-Reader next week in the US, Canada and overseas. The overall build quality mirrors the previous iterations of the hardware and most of the differences are software related. With minor tweaks and updates, how does this e-Reader stack up against the competition?

Kobo, a global leader in eReading, and Free The Children, today announced a year-long partnership focused on supporting literacy among Aboriginal youth in Canada. Both organizations share a commitment to making Reading more accessible and are working together to support literacy programs in Aboriginal communities across the country. Kobo has donated 3,500 of its award-winning Kobo Touch™ eReaders as well as $100,000 to develop a program designed to cultivate a love and passion for reading. The program includes a speaking tour to educate youth about literacy in Aboriginal communities and encourage them to explore their own culture through digital reading.

World Book, Inc., a leading publisher of digital and print educational products--including World Book Online, comprising over 20 digital educational and reference products, and The World Book Encyclopedia--is making many of its popular educational titles available in e-book format and accessible through a unique interactive platform, World Book eBooks.The e-book collection includes beautifully illustrated, engaging titles that contain such multimedia features as videos, audio, and games. Subscribers to World Book eBooks receive 24/7 unlimited simultaneous access to the entire collection, enabling school librarians and public librarians to offer World Book eBooks at all times to all users­––no holds or waiting. An "early adopter" subscription includes updates and revisions to e-books, as well as all new titles that are added to the site during their subscription.

But yesterday, the idea of a free or extremely cheap e-reader was given new life. Using the latest technology from e-reader display company E Ink, e-reader maker PocketBook and phone manufacturer Alcatel are demoing a new kind of e-reading device that piggybacks on your smartphone and has the potential to be extremely inexpensive. (A company called Yota came out with a similar device late last year.)

The AAP has just released a new sales report today. The report covers the first half of this year and is based on data provided by 1196 US publishers, and it shows that the overall US book market was down 6%, largely due to kid’s books and adult paperbacks, while the ebook market dropped by 3.6%.Participating publishers reported a total of $3.1 billion in book sales, down from $3.3 billion for the same period past year. This includes a 1.1% drop in adult book sales ($2173.6 million vs $2196.8 million), a 22.1% drop in the YA segment ($644.5 million vs $827.2 million), and a slight increase in sales of religious books ($276.3 million vs $274.7 million).

The French ereader maker Bookeen is back in the news again today with new details about their next ereaders. In addition to a lower priced Cybook Odyssey, Bookeen also plans to launch a new 8″ ereader.The new device is going to be called the Cybook Ocean, not the Cybook XL (the name Bookeen teased on their blog some months back). It won’t have the Ultra-HD E-ink screen that I suggested might exist, and in fact it won’t even have an E-ink screen.

New York Times E-Book Best Sellers

A version of this list appears in the September 29, 2013 issue of The New York Times Book Review. Rankings reflect sales for the week ending September 14, 2013.

8 de setembro de 2013

Kobo launched a trio of new tablets, a new 6″ ereader, and they also expanded their platform with a new partnership with Pocket and a new branch of their ebookstore.Kobo launched the 6″ ereader that cleared the FCC last month. It’s the new Aura, and there is no new Aura HD model just yet. The Aura comes with 4GB of storage, a Pearl HD E-ink screen (1024×758), frontlight, and touchscreen.

Earlier in the year Kobo had released the Aura HD, which was a 6.7 inch e-Reader that bucked the trend of the standard six inch device. It was said when it was first released that this model was a limited edition and would not see the same sort of mass market push as the Kobo Glow. The Canadian company has gone back to the drawing table and just announced the new Kobo Aura.

Kobo for the first time ever conducted a massive launch event in New York City, where media from all over the country converged to check out all of their hardware. Not only did the e-reader company announce a bevy of new tablets, but unveiled their brand new magazine service.Kobo Magazines current has over 250 titles available and more are being added every day. They intend on launching the service in October and hope to have over one thousand issues available. Major publishers have been attracted to the platform and we will see Conde Nast and Hearst contribute all of their major assets.

Whilst the UK and the US publishing industries gird their loins to do battle with libraries over ebook lending, the Swedes are just quietly and efficiently getting on with it. Axiell, one of the library sector’s largest technology companies, has joined forces with Swedish publishing platform Publit to create Atingo, an ebook loan management platform that brings publishers and libraries together to easily negotiate loans on a book-by-book basis.

It’s still early days for digital magazines, and it’s impossible to predict what the future will bring. But the initial hype about the iPad as an attractive publishing platform for magazines doesn’t seem to have panned out. After the introduction of the Kindle, ebook sales exploded for a few years (before flattening out more recently). Although digital magazine subscriptions nearly doubled over the last year (from a tiny base), they haven’t experienced anything like the ebook boom – at least not yet. “Tablet circulation has not increased as rapidly as publishers had hoped,” writes AdAge.

The alliance did little to help them defend against Amazon. Four months later, Amazon brought its Kindle e-reader to Japan. It quickly became Japan’s top-selling e-reader, gaining 38.3 percent of the market, according to the MM Research Institute, a data firm in Tokyo. Even though Rakuten’s Kobo had beaten Kindle to market by nearly five months, it grabbed only 33 percent of Japan’s e-reader sales during the same 12-month period. Sony, which had stated its goal of selling half of all e-readers by 2012, managed to hold only 25.5 percent with its devices.

Kindle Matchbook is going to be launching in October, and getting that Kindle ebook could cost you as much as $3. There’s also only a limited number of publishers signed up for the program, with around 10,000 titles available when the program goes live. But that is likely to change as more publishers sign up.

E Ink Carta displays utilize a new electronic ink formulation and technology to provide a dramatic 50 percent improvement in contrast ratio and over 20 percent improvement in reflectance over previous generations of E Ink displays for a remarkably improved viewing and reading experience. The new Carta displays utilize the most advanced bistable electronic paper technology to deliver the best contrast ratio E Ink has ever delivered to the market with the same extremely low power consumption expected from an E Ink display.The new display has been specifically tuned for reading applications, fully supporting E Ink Regal™ waveform technology. Regal waveforms dramatically reduce the need for full page refreshes after a few page turns. This enhances the reader’s experience by providing smoother page turns and more focused reading.Amazon has selected the Carta display for its new Kindle Paperwhite eReader, the first eReader to use the new display.

As nice as this e-reader looks, I don’t think owners of the current-generation model will be crushed to learn they’re about to become owners of previous-generation Paperwhites. The new features aren’t that enticing. Mostly, I’m happy that the e-reader category remains popular enough that Amazon is still updating the Kindle as briskly as it ever did. (It isn’t alone, either: Kobo, one of its underdog rivals, also just announced a fancy new e-reader.)And current Paperwhite owners who do covet the new model’s goodies may eventually get some of them: Amazon says that it hopes to release a software update for the original model, giving it new features that aren’t contingent on the latest model’s upgraded hardware and faster processor. Sounds good to me — I own the current model and keep it on my nightstand, even though I do most of my e-reading on my phone and iPad.

New formats in literature are rare, and disruptive. They usually accompany a change in technology. Amazon was the first big player to realise that digitisation would allow for a new literary format. In January 2011, it quietly launched a substore on its US website to sell something it called a Kindle Single: Compelling Ideas Expressed At Their Natural Length, as a press release headline blandly put it."Typically between 5,000 and 30,000 words, Kindle Singles are editorially curated and showcase writing from both new and established voices – from bestselling novelists and journalists to previously unpublished writers."

An American judge who found technology firm Apple liable for conspiring to fix e-book prices imposed injunction on the iPad makers to prevent it from breaking further rules.A court ruled in July that Apple was guilty of entering into an agreement with five major American publishers to control e-book prices.

Ailise Bulfin, The Mummy's Curse: The True History of a Dark Fantasy, by Roger Luckhurst; Sarah Cleary, TV Horror: Investigating the Dark Side of the Small Screen, by Lorna Jowett and Stacey Abbott; Daragh Downes, Popular Revenants: The German Gothic and Its International Reception, 1800-2000, edited by Andrew Cusack and Barry Murnane; Jenny McDonnell, The Gothic, Postcolonialism and Otherness: Ghosts from Elsewhere, by Tabish Khair; James Moriarty, Reflections in a Glass Darkly: Essays on J. Sheridan Le Fanu, edited by Gary William Crawford, Jim Rockhill and Brian J. Showers and The Lost Journal of Bram Stoker: The Dublin Years, edited by Elizabeth Miller and Dacre Stoker; Shelley Trower, Gothic Music: The Sounds of the Uncanny, by Isabella van Elferen

BOOK REVIEWS: FICTION

Adam Crothers, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, by Neil Gaiman; Edward O'Hare, Granta 117: Horror, edited by John Freeman; Alexander Runchman, Everything isAlways Wrong, by Graham Tugwell